This will be interesting to follow - from FACT Magazine:
Synth pioneer Don Buchla is taking the current owners of his brand to court for $500,000
Don Buchla, the 77-year-old inventor of early synthesizers such as the Series 100 modular, is taking the current owners of the Buchla brand to court for breach of contract.
Buchla sold his original company, Buchla & Associates, in 2012, after a battle with cancer that left him unable to continue with day-to-day tasks like sales and marketing. In order to secure cash for his future and have the freedom to continue developing new products, he sold the Buchla brand to Audio Supermarket Pty. Ltd., an Australia-based music distributor, which formed a new company, Buchla Electronic Musical Instruments.
In a suit filed with the The United States District Court for the Northern District of California yesterday (March 24), Buchla alleges he was promised $440,000 for the sale of the company, but has been paid less than $110,000 so far. It also alleges that the defendants breached the Asset Purchase Agreement of Buchla & Associates by “failing to use reasonable business efforts to reach sales targets.”
According to the suit, Buchla was also employed by BEMI in a development role as chief technology officer, which the suit alleges was terminated “without good cause” in 2013. The suit further alleges that the defendants have acted “in bad faith, and with oppression and malice”, to deny Buchla the benefits of the agreement made between the two parties.
The lawsuit is attempting to regain the original company’s assets, intellectual property and confirmed purchase orders back to Buchla, as well as seeking compensation for damages, by proving that Buchla was convinced to sign a “highly unfavorable, one-sided Memorandum of Understanding with Audio Supermarket” back in 2012, which the suit alleges “was merely an agreement to negotiate in good faith toward a purchase agreement and not a binding purchase agreement in itself.”
Don's designs are amazing but not for me. I like traditional keyboard-based synthesis and Don's idea was to liberate the composition process from the constraints of a keyboard. There is some amazing work being done with his hardware but again, not for me. I like harmony and melody more than bleeps and bloops.
That being said, I wish him well. Court filing is here. The new company is using his old domain name: Buchla
Leave a comment